This Morning I Woke In Pain, Needing
by AnneKB
Summary: L&O & SVU - the long-term effects of solitude


Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the poem used to create this story – the characters are Dick Wolf's, the poem is by a writer named Louis Martinelli. I hope they don't mind my borrowing their work – I promise I'll give it back when I'm done.

Written for the Solitude challenge at the Thursday100plus community over at LiveJournal.

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**_This Morning I Woke in Pain,  Needing to Hear Your Voice_**

_You've been gone one week_

_Wandering a remnant of prairie_

Was it just a week? Or maybe a month? How long, exactly, had it been?

Part of the problem with having no past was the inability to connect with other people. How do you share experiences and find things in common without giving too much away? How do you strike a balance between what you can reveal and what you can't?

It was too hard to walk that line, so she avoided it entirely. Instead she would go to work alone, return home alone and fall asleep with the TV blaring – anything to fill the silence. One week turned into one month, one month into two, all before she realized it – all while she strained to see past this future that spread before her like an endless, featureless landscape.

_your__ tracks disappearing_

_and__ no one can find you._

The closet is the only place left. 

Over the years he has slowly changed most everything else. When the couch she picked out began to sag, he replaced it. When the car she bought sputtered and died, he sold it to a junkyard. When his niece requested her jewelry, he gave it to her without even blinking. 

But until today he had not cleaned out her closet.

The clothes now smell musty, the accumulated scent of so long behind closed doors, kept from sunlight. Hanger by hanger he pulls them out, discarding the things even he knows are hopelessly out of style, saving the better ones to be cleaned and donated to goodwill. Most of the clothes lie in the latter category – her sense of style was conservative, like his own.

He doesn't have a problem until he finds one of her uniforms hanging in the back.

It still wrapped in a plastic dry-cleaners bag, and when he unwraps it, it smells like she did when she said goodbye. The buttons still gleam, and the flight wings she was so proud of are pinned neatly to the pocket. 

He remembers how he loved watching her in her uniform. There was still a small thrill in being married to a flight attendant, even if she had long since dispelled any of his illusions about the profession.

He glances at the piles of clothes. Suddenly they – and this uniform he is holding by the hanger – are all that is left of his wife. The visible signs of her life that remain are vanishing, one by one.

He will donate the clothes, he has already resolved to do that.

But the uniform is going back into the plastic wrap, and back into the closet.

He can't let everything disappear.

_This morning I woke in pain_

_needing__ to hear your voice._

By now, her memory is bittersweet. The daily reminders that once pained him are now a comfort – the kind of memories that make him smile to himself for what appears to be no reason at all. Most of the time, this is a good thing. 

But then there are nights when the simple fact of her absence hits him again, as if it is still new, with a suddenness that takes his breath away. These moments are few and far between after so long, yet they still happen. 

It has been a while since he woke up from a dream about her, desperate to hear her voice again.

But it's not really a surprise when it happens.

_There is no return address_

_no__ way to reach you with a question_

If only you could tell me where you are, she thought. If only there was a way to send something, anything, across the gulf that separates us, I'd find a way to get through it. I'd find a way to get past it.

And there are always questions. 

Do you think of me?

Do you miss me?

Do you wake up in the middle of the night and wonder what I'm doing, the way I wonder about you?

Do you wonder if I'm with someone?

Are you with someone?

Are you as lonely as I am?

_Do you miss me?_

There is no way to ask, and no answers are forthcoming, so the questions linger. They echo in her mind. __

When they first began she used to ask these questions. In late night phone calls that lasted for hours, she would ask, over and over.

"Do you think about me?"

"All the time," came the answer, each time, "And if only you knew how I think about you."

Now, when there is only silence, to keep herself together she remembers the old answers. They are the life preserver that keeps her afloat, waiting for the moment when there is a way to ask these questions again.

_Today there are no words from you_

_but__ I will go on listening still,_

_this__ large silence your eloquence now._

Apart from the job, it's a quiet kind of life. Go to work, joke with Ed, do the job, go home. There's not much else. The occasional date, phone calls to his daughter, or a night at the bar with other graying cops where at least two-thirds of them drank nothing stronger than club soda.

The two ex-wives don't enter the picture much, either. One called a few days ago to ask if he still had one of her old albums stashed in his collection – as it turned out, she had forgotten she donated it to a church charity drive. End of conversation.

But then, there isn't much to say. Somehow the lack of words says more about his current situation, though – he's finally reached the point where he's ready to listen. Ready to hear what anyone has to say, about anything – finally ready to hear their words.

The only problem is, now no one seems to say anything.

***

A/N: In case I created any confusion, the characters referred to are, in the following order, Alex, Don, Jack, Olivia and Lennie. The verses used follow the order of the original poem. 


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